


Family

by rosebleue



Category: Monster High
Genre: Death, Fluff and Angst, Not Canon Compliant, Not Romance, Other, Other: See Story Notes, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 23:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5763250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosebleue/pseuds/rosebleue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Independent one shots about the family life of Monster High characters.<br/>PLEASE: See notes before reading.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rameses, a grateful father.

**Author's Note:**

> The MH dolls began distribution in my country before the show did, so the only pieces of canon I had were the logs. So I started making my own mental stories for the characters based on that. These short (and I mean really short) chapters are based on what I imagined back then, centered in their families. Of course these are not canon compliant. I hope they can bring you some entertainment.
> 
> (English is not my native language, by the way)

They were children.

Cleo and Nefera were just children. And they had been murdered. But that was what being a king meant, right? Gemstones and poisons and crowns and glittering knifes. For a fraction of a second, Rameses was grateful that his wife had long ago disappeared. He could only imagine her grief. The king had insisted in preparing the mummification of their beloved children himself, something unheard of. His court was already convinced that he was insane, and now the king himself had confirmed their suspicions.

He kissed the bandaged face of Cleopatra. _Beloved by her Father_. What a beautiful name he had given her, a name now written in the inscriptions that would guide her to a new life.

He kissed the bandaged face of Nefera. _Beautiful Child,_ and he hoped her name would guide his firstborn as well. To a life where food is abundant and flowers always bloom. To a life where gods watch after you, and peace is everlasting, a world where children are not murdered because of politics.

Rameses knew the Royal Embalmer was waiting for him across the closed doors. The king could hear his loyal friend's anxious breathing, and he felt bad for him too. Still he took some time. He sit between his children and starting humming a lullaby. Ah, but he could never sing it like the late Queen would. His voice was broken and harsh and buried in tears. But it still was a song of Ra bringing new life to the world in the morning, of the Nile singing sweetly, of children playing in the fields. 

The king let his friend in, and he hesitated before giving the poison bottle to his master. But the king again explained that he wanted to be awaken in a world where his children were laughing again, that this life was of no concern, that he could pass the Trial of the Feather, that was acting out of love. And his beloved friend held him as he fell asleep dreaming of the late Queen and her two precious babies. 

And maybe this new world, this world of the future, wasn't that scary. After all, even if it was noisy, even if the pollution hardly let him see the face of Father Ra any longer, it was a world where his children were happy again. Even if flowers weren't always in full bloom and peace wasn't everlasting, his love would always be. And his children, his beautiful daughters, would never suffer again. That was his vow in this new, strange land. His hope had bloomed under the rays of Father Ra and his prayers had been answered. 

They were still children. His happy, sad, scared, beautiful, beloved children.


	2. Erik, a happy father.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for Operetta! She is my all time favourite doll. I hope you enjoy this one as well.

The thing about Erik is that he was finally happy. When he had fled Paris in a hurry and landed that stupid job as a pianist in a boat in the Mississippi he thought he would end up throwing himself into the river out of the sorrow he felt over _his_ Christine. But lo and rejoice, no one in that side of the world gave a damn about he talking in the third person, about his strange emotional meltdowns, about him playing with that mask on, about his strange, preternatural voice. Soon there were long queues just to listen to him, and the name Erik Garnier was written in golden letters. That was indeed a very strange part of the world! 

And one night, one fateful Mardi Gras night, Erik knew what love was again. One of the backup singers in the boat ran to him. She had probably too much to drink when she removed his mask and kissed him in his corpse-like sunken cheeks. She was smiling, and her blue eyes had a resolved shine to them. Erik buried his face in her red locks just so she couldn't see him crying. 

It was as if they had always known each other. Her ancestry was so mixed her accent was all over the place, and she was quick-witted and smart, and talked too quickly, and switched languages, and related unrelated concepts so easily. That drove all the other musicians in the riverboat opera house insane, of course, but not Erik. The phantom wasn't just a musical prodigy, he was a prodigy in almost every field. He had worked as an engineer and as a magician, as an assassin and a stage writer. He was delighted. She had never had formal music formation, and Erik was happy about teaching again. Erik didn't know a lot about his new homeland, and she was more than happy of showing them around. When, shining bright like always, she looked him straight in the eye and just said "I am going to marry you", he nodded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and kept playing her favourite song on the boat's old, half broken piano. 

When their honeymoon rolled around, Erik wasn't afraid of returning to Europe any longer, so they ended up staying in Paris for five years. Erik had the chance to listen to _his_ Christine in a theatre again. And he felt nothing at all. Months later, he called his firstborn Christine as well. When the girl was three she could play the piano as well as his father, even with the limitations of her tiny fingers. Her mother, delighted, nicknamed her Operetta. They soon missed America, and they departed with no bags in the first boat, without giving it too much of a thought. 

But then it happened. People hearing _his_ Operetta singing would go insane, and have violent meltdowns. It was as if she had the same emotional scarring as her father, but what he did as a younger man with physical violence, other people would do for her. Her music was strange, and powerful, and scary. Preternatural. If Erik Garnier's _Don Juan Triunfante_ 's notes could reduce any grown man to a crying mess, Operetta's music was far, far more powerful. The only ones who seemed to be safe from that influence were he and his wife. 

And thus he, whose only solace for years was music, broke his child's piano, her violin's strings, the guitar she tried to write rockabilly in. The little girl asked him to stop, and for the first time in decades he considered himself a monster again.

 _Erik is a failure of a father as much as Erik is a failure of a human being_ he repeated himself over and over and over again.

In the end, it was his wife who was able to teach Operetta how to control his emotions, and only her voice remained cursed to everyone but her closest relatives. Her compositions were beautiful and emotional, but they were just music. She grew a proud artist, a caring young woman, a loving daughter.

But Erik would always feel he was a monster, and a failure, no matter how many times she hugged his corpse-like body and called him _dad_ , in that beautiful, southern English.


	3. Gillman, a proud father.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lagoona Blue is the cutest ecologist, isn't her? Her dad is very, very proud of her. 
> 
> (Warning, this chapter goes from 0 to 100 really fast and it's even shorter than usual)

Lagoona kissed the cheek of his dad before getting out of the underwater chamber where they had just had breakfast, her favourite ensemble dripping in seawater. She graciously waved from the wooden door and left for school. 

Gillman finished his meal and stretched, still smiling at his now gone daughter. She took after her mother, that was clear. They had the same big, beautiful eyes. He was a very, very proud father.

In the wooden house, over the saltwater ponds that constituted most of their family home, notes from the environmentalist projects Lagoona had taken part in hanged on every vividly-coloured wall. Lagoona and her mother helping a stuck whale on an Australian beach. A group of young monsters protesting about deforestation in front of a paper factory. A smiling Lagoona in a recycling rally. Maps of the coast of several countries, woodcuts of ancient sea creatures. She had taken that from her parents. He was, so, so proud.

He left the house by swimming through one of the subterranean conducts that connected it to the open sea. It was easy enough to locate the boat he was looking for. He jumped on board and avoided the drums full of radioactive oil as he moved stealthily. The first one who died was choked. When Gillman dropped his body to the sea it made a small splash, like a diving cormorant. Three of them got their throats slit with the tip of a harpoon he found hanging on a wall. When panic finally broke on board, he started crushing skulls instead. The captain panicked and jumped to the water, were he drowned.

Gillman explored the boat looking for something useful he could pillage, but other than the waste they planned to dump in the sea there was nothing, so he returned home and hurried to cook a hearty meal for his beloved daughter.

Lagoona told him about how the Ecology Club was planning on trying to prevent the dumping of toxic waste on the coastline of their state. He agreed passionately, and promised to help with anything she could need. He could prepare some sashimi to raise funds, and she could bake cupcakes! Or maybe designing new swimsuits to sell? They smiled happily at each other. There was no reason not to. He was really, really proud of his beautiful daughter.

 

 

 

 


	4. Dracula, a  feared father.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter.   
> I was very conflicted about this one. On the one hand, it's made clear in the flavour text he was once a Roman soldier, and this seems to be the only fact all the extended canons agree about. On the other hand I am a history nerd and I wanted to write about Vlad III. I did my best. After all, this fic is not canon compliant, so I ended up mashing up everything I liked in a weird way. Sorry for that.

Laura was waxing rhapsodic about her carrot harvest and Dracula smiled absently. It's not that he didn't want to listen, but in a few days it would be his daughter's birthday, and she would give him The Talk.

Dracula was a feared monster, even though he was a respected member of the community. He was almost the undead equivalent of a politician. If he wasn't to rule, at least he wouldn't be ruled over. And he was, pardoning the pun, quite draconian in his ideas. Yes, he believed all monsters to be equal. But humans, on the other hand... Nonsense. He was respected. He was feared. The Count. The Leader.

Marcus Draco Priscus was feared in battle even years after his death. Wounded in Gaul under Julius Caesar, a druid had cursed him, and cursed he was. But he was still a soldier, and soldiering he did, in the blanket of the night, killing in the name of his motherland decade after decade, emperor after emperor. He was respected. He was feared. The Dragon, the Assassin.

Trajan sent Marcus to Dacia and he and his monster cohort followed orders. The conquest was glorious and so, _so incredibly Roman_. But the Emperor cared more for his roads than for his little elite group, so when he solicited to stay in Dacia, the Emperor responded quickly. His army returned to the Eternal City without him. But he didn't care. His beloved new wife, his Alina, would die in such a big city, far away from the mountains and forests she loved so dearly. Transylvania. The land beyond the great forest. That woman and her little baby would never be happy in a city, and he wouldn't be happy without them. He was loved. He was cared for. The Roman. The husband.

Alina died relatively soon, but all times of bliss happen in a heartbeat for a vampire. He wasn't bitter about it, not for a second. She had asked to die as a human, and he respected his choice. Romans valued dying with dignity and honour and he was terribly, _oh so terribly Roman_. He built her the nicest marble tomb mortal money could buy, and placed her final home in the forest she so dearly loved. Then returned home and forced his undead condition in Alina's child. He didn't consider the morality of this choice, either. It seemed the only logical thing to do. She was too young to decide, he thought, and he let her cries for mercy go unheard as he drained her. He was ruthless. He was bold. _He was terribly Roman_.

And suddenly he had a family, and a castle that grew for centuries around a marble tomb. And he preyed on mortals, of course, but he also learnt from them, and learnt to love his land, and learnt a new strange faith. And suddenly he was the right hand of kings and princes, the warrior of God, ally of Hungary and Wallachia. He was never a ruler per se, of course, but the rulers called themselves his family and paid him tribute. Was he feared? Was he respected? And, abobe all, who cared? He had a mission and a homeland. He had a daughter and things to fight for. He was fearless and ruthless. He was a leader and a force of nature. He was a dragon and a prince of princes. 

It took centuries for him to stop living among humans. That was it. His small Roman army had grown and came to reclaim his presence, and countless monsters had joined them. Were they a society? Maybe. The world never changes. Or it changes in closed circles, he thought. He didn't care. He would set his own goals. He would move forward, and people would follow him in thunderous support. The vampire. The Leader.

The Talk. Laura implores him to stop killing. She is right. She is the proof. _She literally just eats vegetables_. Vampires don't need to drink blood. Vampires don't need to kill. He doesn't need to kill. 

He doesn't need to drink blood. He wants to drink blood. He doesn't need to kill humans.

_He enjoys killing humans._

Laura kisses his cheek and goes about her day, fully conscious of the fact her dad is a monster.

And so is her. 

Blood and family and dragons and leaders.


End file.
